A new Maple Now livestream happened after the 2nd test world patch for the new 3rd skill core. That was prety much the main topic, where Changseop talked about their intentions and the feedback received from players. He also mentioned that there will be a big balance patch in September!
New 3rd Skill Core
- Some skills’ designs have changed since the trailer from the showcase. Although they have a limited schedule, they changed what they could to provide the intended skill experience.
- They have made some changes to the skills based on feedback from the first patch. There were many things they overlooked and places where they created unintended inconvenience. There are definitely still more things to touch upon but they will continue to work on them.
- Most of the unintended inconveniences should have been fixed in this test server patch.
- Many players have said that these skills’ damage increases were much lower than what you expected from a brand new skill. There are some differences between jobs but the values are set to give about a 2.5~3% damage boost. There are a few reasons for this.
- New skills are being released at a faster pace. There are many factors a MapleStory character can work on to become stronger, but now, the balance between skills and the other growth factors is a bit off. That is why they thought it would be better to add these skill cores with a limited damage increase and make adjustments later.
- It is true that since they are doing this, there are issues such as the skills intended to be burst damage not being impactful enough.
- There are also issues with balancing between skills that they feel they need to fix.
- For now, they will fix all unintended bugs and structural issues in this July patch. After that, in the September update, they are planning to not only balance the skill cores, but to make overall adjustments to combat mechanics and the balancing between jobs.
- At that time, the effectiveness of skills will change, and they are planning to provide reset items to facilitate players.
- It would’ve been best if they could complete everything perfectly all at once for players. However, this is a game that is constantly being updated and inevitably, there are periods where things can remain in a somewhat unfinished state. It is his and the development team’s role to shorten those time periods as much as possible, but he is truly sorry that there will be a delay this time, for about 1-2 months.
- All that being said, it doesn’t mean that they won’t do anything in the meantime. They will be making a couple of changes for the official server release:
- Many players have said that the materials required for these new skill cores are a bit excessive compared to the damage boost they give. Even though they have plans for September, this situation will continue for the next two months, players’ feedback is very reasonable so they have decided to lower the overall material requirements (Sol Erda and Sol Erda Frgments) by about 15%
- Unlike other skills which generally had better effectiveness just unlocking them at level 1, these were relatively weak. They will change it so that level 1 is stronger. Naturally, the increases per level will be decreased, but they will now be better at lower levels.
- He sincerely apologizes for all of the shortcomings with these new skills, and also the fact that they were the main feature for this July update and now they feel lacking in that sense. They will do their best to prepare for the upcoming updates and build a well-made game with proper skills.
- Some players were commenting that they shouldn’t have added the skills if it was going to be like this. He said that there are some aspects of these skills that leave much to be desired, whether it is intention or not, particularly regarding their damage and structures. However, combat is extremely important to MapleStory and he thinks its important to continue adding skills and not slow down their current release pace.
Combat Changes
- Map patterns are now removed when a boss is bound.
- They saw that some jobs were having difficulties dealing damage even while the boss was bound, due to having to worry about unavoidable map patterns. This is a somewhat radical change but they want players to be able to focus entirely on dealing damage during that time. This change is intended to create more reasonable boss battles.
- Some players expressed concerns for Mikhail players who would Royal Guard map patterns while a boss was bound, so they made a change where if a monster is bound, Mikhail can still Royal Guard by touching the monster.
- The maximum damage cap has been increased from 700b to 10t. They made it a little bigger cap so they wouldn’t need to touch it for a while.
Events
- The Mission Ultima event’s second chapter will take place. Gerand Darmoor’s Apostles are making their appearance. You can see the fights with Reina and Ypsilon. They tried a lot of new things in terms of cutscenes with flashy and unique elements unlike anything in MapleStory before. The Great Culling will begin, revealing Darmoor’s plans. This is an event story for now but will be incorporated into the official story soon.
- The Ultima Squad event is a fun new minigame.
- In June, the Specter Blast minigame provided lots of experience. In July, while experience is still important, they want players to be able to grow their skills this month, so you can get Sol Erda and Sol Erda Fragments.
- In terms of gameplay, this is a kind of test. There’s been more content in the game where you can just leave your computer on, like the VIP Sauna, and the amount of focus required when grinding has also been greatly decreased, and there are times when the game feels a bit boring. They want to provide players with something fun to do at the same time.
- In this game, you don’t have to directly control anything, you just make decisions every once in a while to progress the game. You have three characters (warrior, archer, magician) that automatically hunt monsters and clear stages. You don’t need items or mesos, you can just unlock additional characters, new skills, upgrade their gear as you go. It’s kind of like a character-growing gameplay like Tamagotchis.
- Unlike other event which have a very clear start and end (for example, attendance checks), this one is your own choice. Different players can take different paths that take different amounts of time to reach different points. Some players may want to actively watch and make decisions while others just check once a day. It’s designed so that most players can receive the base rewards in the regular coin shop during the event period, but there’s an additional Chaos coin shop where you might not receive all of them depending on your playstyle while others might get them really fast.
- They wanted it on a separate server to run completely outside of the client but they weren’t able to due to various implementation constraints. However, it does run in its own independent window so you can use the new expanded window feature to place it somewhere else on your screen while you’re grinding or AFKing.
- The Merchant Group’s Material Support event will be upgraded to provide more experience and Sol Erda Energy.
- The Etherion Artifact event has been changed.
- They intended this event to provide meaningful drops while hunting, and for players to actually use them in larger amounts so that it would be a valuable item in the market to trade with. However, as most players are aware, the price is significantly lower than they intended and it’s not really efficient to try and get higher levels so the demand is low.
- Since this is a 3-month event and it’s only been 1 month, they will be making changes.
- The Etherion dropped from hunting has been decreased a bit, and they made significant changes to the benefits. The lower levels have been changed to be better and a new level 6 has been added.
- Many players wanted Hazel from the Lethe story to be added as an android, so they added a little event where you can play hide-and-seek in Lethe’s mansion to get it as a reward.
- The Momentum Pass has returned. Many players have already reached level 280 even in Challengers World, the growth rate is much faster than before. Therefore, they wanted to provide additional growth benefits past level 280.
- The Maple Points Shop has returned. It was necessary to maintain the value of mesos to Maple Points. You can buy Mechaberry Farm Entry Tickets, Blueberry Farm Entry Tickets, Black Circulators, and the Mihoroid.
- The Maerin first clear rewards will be distributed. They were very proud seeing that people really liked Maerin’s concept, so they also made some Maerin merchandise. Kai was well received too, so they want to continue these kinds of things in the future. People were asking them to release it as a permanent boss, but seasonal bosses are designed to let you do things that you can’t do in regular combat situations, which makes it a bit hard to change them to regular bosses. Someone also said to remove Guardian Angel Slime and replace it with Maerin, but he said don’t hate on Slime too much.
Cash Shop
- The Boutique Gift will return, including a new Sol Hecate Skin: Noxie. There’s also a new item that lets you place 1 or 2 charm dots on your character.
- The Item Dyeing system has been reorganized. Previously, they changed so that instead of being a one-time thing, you can change an item continuously once you have applied a Prism on it. This time, they completely reorganized the UI and you can buy the special Prisms at all times.
- You can turn off pets’ special effects now.
- For the world shared pet slots, they have added equipment presets so you can easily switch between attack and magic attack equipment. Some people asked them to just combine attack and magic attack but that’s connected to the value of existing items so they can’t simply combine them.
Improvements
- The Skill Repeated Input setting has been added to the Laboratory settings.
- In Windows, there’s a delay beyween key bpresses to prevent keys from being inputted too quickly in succession.
- Some MapleStory players use a setting to eliminate this delay by modifying their registry values, also known as filter keys. It lets you use skills with the delays applied exactly as much as the systematically designed delay in-game, which naturally improve aspects of the game (not everything but it depends on your job). However, doing so doesn’t just affect your skills, it’s your entire input system, so things like using the UI or chatting becomes inconvenient.
- The fact that there is a performance discrepancy depending on whether or not you use filter keys, and the fact that this isn’t a feature they provide so it becomes inconvenient in other areas, are both problems they want to solve.
- Therefore, they will officially provide the feature in-game. It’s in the Laboratory settings for now but after some testing, it will become a regular setting.
- There are some options that were in the Laboratory settings but can now be official features, such as the upscaling filter and the silhouette in boss battles.
- In June, they tested Monster Park Hands, where you can hunt automatically on your phone without being on your computer. In July, it will be introduced as an official feature, and you can buy 1 hour passes for 9,900 NX. You can only buy up to 4 hours a week.
- The number of Union presets have been increased from 5 to 10. Since they changed the Union board to points, players are making more individual presets for their various characters so they wanted to give more options.
- A new concept called Green Maple ID has been added. As mentioned in the showcase, they need to constantly make changes or adjustments in-game to properly maintain the game economy (in addition to their operation policies). Previously, there was a time where you could create more than 9 Maple IDs per person, which is not intended now. For people with 10 or more Maple IDs, they will have to choose 9 of them to be Green Maple IDs. All others will be Yellow Maple IDs that will have restrictions on various gameplay activities. This is an attempt to prevent the market from being flooded with mesos produced excessively through multi-accounting. It doesn’t apply to 99% of normal people but they need to gradually block these edge cases.
- They made a lot of improvements and bug fixes to the Maple Auction. He is truly sorry that the new Auction House faced so many bugs, issues, and improper service. It seems to be mostly stable now but there were constant issues and bug fixes every day. He did say at the showcase that it was experimental, but he apologizes that it was so problematic and honestly unacceptable.
They have a list of things that players are asking for, and are coding as they go down the list.- The sale UI changed a lot from the original, and lots of people are saying it is quite inconvenient. They made the click area bigger, it will open the inventory together as a set, and when selling a bundle of items, it didn’t show the per item price which is more important so they added that.
- Since the bulk claim feature was simplified, sometimes you would unintentionally claim items you didn’t want on different characters, so items that would become untradeable if you’re claiming them on a different character than the one that listed it will no longer be claimed when you use the bulk claim feature.
July NOW Apology Rewards
- 4 4x Experience Coupons (30 Minutes)
- 10 VIP Boosters
- 3 Sol Erda/Sol Erda Fragment Vouchers
- 4 VIP Sauna Entry Tickets
- 1 Mechaberry Farm Entry Ticket